An FBAR is the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts Form TD F 90-22.1 from the Dept. of Treasury (US). Who must file the FBAR? If you are a “person of the United States, and if you have “financial interest in, signature authority or other authority over any financial account(s) in a foreign country” […]

Having got used to the simplicity of brokerage accounts in the US, it took me some time to get a handle on how the brokerage accounts are structured and setup in India. Once you ‘get’ it, its not complicated – just painfully fragmented. However, there is typically no simple description that helps you ‘get’ it – so you’ve to play 20 questions and reverse engineer an understanding that works. Here’s what I have learned:

The recent events in the US financial markets have lead to a sharp downturn in India’s markets too. Additionally, with the dollar strengthening against the rupee, the purchase power of the dollar has gone up significantly over the past three-four weeks. These two events, individually but more so coupled together, make considering investments in India very attractive.

Investments in the Indian stock markets has some great advantages. I am often surprised that expats, NRIs and others do not always realize some of the subtle advantages. Beyond being a hot growth area for the past few years (30-40% returns have been the common for a lot of mutual funds), the subtle advantages are on the tax treatment for these invesments. In this note, I’m just focusing on this tax treatment.

I continue to be amazed at the amount of paperwork that is required in India. For any activity, there is a requirement for a letter to be written. Depositing a check (cheque) involves filling in a deposit slip with some reasonable and mostly unreasonable or redundant information. Nonetheless, there are many instances where some documents will be repeatedly required. I mean, really require. With every service you ask for, you will be asked to provide some version of these documents. So, it is best to have them handy. These include PAN Card, proof of identity and proofs of address.